Our telephone trilled in the early morning. An icicle cracked, dropping from a window frame on to frozen concrete. By the time my husband and I had donned our thermal layers, socks, woollen jumpers, down jackets, hats, scarves, mittens and waterproof boots, the NGO-donated hospital ambulance arrived.
Inside, we squashed across the six seats with the driver, a surgeon, anaesthetist, surgical nurse, laboratory technician and our interpreter. A lady was experiencing a post-partum haemorrhage in a remote bagh or village three hours away. We cried, "Yawii! Let's go!"
We didn't go very far. Ten minutes away, surrounded by vast undulating steppe, is a monument to horses. A square of white and gold stupa-shaped statues surrounds arched monuments and a cast of the famed 300-year-old horse after which the town is named. Beyond the wall lies a long line of horse head skeletons intertwined by sky-blue khatags, or prayer flags. One by one, my colleagues supplicated before a shrine depicting a Mahayana Buddhist yidam, or spiritual protector.
From between the medical supplies and equipment the driver, Chuluun, located a bottle of Genghis Khan vodka. Shot glasses were passed around. We dipped our right ring fingers into the vodka, raised them above our heads, and flicked vodka in the direction of three winds. Lastly, we touched our foreheads, the seat of our souls.
"We have atoned ourselves and confused the evil spirits," the anaesthetist, Boldbataar, said. "We are ready to journey safely and attend to our patient."
At the bagh clinic, the medical team awaited us,and the patient was successfully attended to. After a late lunch of horsemeat, the driver of the clinic's sole ambulance asked that a bottle of vodka and a bag of sweets be given to our hospital's director. "We thank you for coming to us," he said gratefully.
We sang our way homeward. At our town outskirts, we paused by an isolated ovoo. We each collected three rocks and walked clockwise around the stone cairn. During each circle we made a wish and dropped a rock.
"Doing this reminds me I'm never alone," Bolormaa, the nurse, confided. Beneath that immense, humbling, ever-blue sky, we returned to our hospital.
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